Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has slammed the use of the term "radical economic transformation" to defend state capture.
Speaking at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Ramaphosa reportedly said the term had come to mean something negative as it was by defenders of state capture to paint anyone who questioned wrong-doing as an enemy of transformation.
The Mail & Guardian quoted Ramaphosa as saying: "We now know that some highly paid PR specialises contrived a plan to use terms such as radical economic transformation and white monopoly capital essentially to launch a publicity offensive in defence of their clients. And we all know who those clients are.
"It was part of defining a new narrative where those who stood in the way of their clients' interests were presented as being opposed to radical economic transformation and representing the interests of what one would call white monopoly capital".
He said the country should not be distracted by the use of the term, and that the country needed to focus its energies on inclusive growth and redressing the imbalances of the past.
"We should not be distracted or even side-tracked by the misuse of the term. What we need to do is to go beyond slogans. Is to go to the heart of the matter and look what needs to be done to redress the imbalances of past.
"We must therefore focus on the real substance of radical economic transformation and the steps that need to be taken should be steps all of us as South Africans take".